“Does she have a house in Spain, then?” I probed, in my best casual tone.
“No.” Geoff shook his head. “She lives in Italy, mostly, these days. But she mentioned something about Spain last time she rang—Pamplona, I think it was.”
“Where the bulls are?”
“Yes.” His mouth twisted wryly. “Rather an ordeal, visiting my mother, most of the time. She’s always trying to fix me up with her friends’ daughters, trying to get me married off. I expect she means well, but it’s bloody tiring.” He changed the subject. “What would you like me to bring you back, for a present?”
“I don’t need anything.”
“Rubbish. Now, what would you like?”
I thought about it. “Well,” I told him, “you might bring me back a couple of those huge coffee cups that they use over there. You know, the breakfast cups, that hold gallons of coffee. I’ve always wanted some of those.”
“Then,” Geoff promised grandly, “you shall have some. How would an even dozen suit you?”
I laughed. “Two would be plenty, thanks. Besides, they’d never let you back on the plane with a dozen of the things.”
“I don’t fly commercial airlines, my dear,” he reminded me, his eyes forgiving my ignorance. “I can carry whatever I like. Besides, you’ve got that huge dresser in your dining room, and no dishes to fill it with, so it’s a dozen coffee cups whether you like it or not. Any other requests?”
I smiled wickedly at him. “Somehow, I have a feeling this would be the perfect time to ask for that Louis Vuitton luggage I’ve always coveted, but I won’t push my luck.”
“Why ever not?”
“I’m afraid God might strike me dead for being greedy,” I explained, and Geoff laughed.
“It’s not always a sin, you know,” he said, “being greedy.”
I sent him a long, motherly look. “You need to have a talk with my brother,” I advised him. “Your soul’s in mortal peril.”
Vivien sailed into the pub on a wave of energy and radiant good health, her fair hair whipped by the wind into a tangled mass of gold. “Who’s in mortal peril?” she asked, pausing beside our table with interest.
“I am,” Geoff informed her. “Or at least, my soul is, according to Julia, here.”
Vivien nodded agreement. “Past redemption, I should think,” she told him.
“Then another drink won’t spoil it.” He drained his glass and held it up hopefully. “That is, if you’re serving.”
“You might give a girl a chance to get her coat off.” Vivien laughed, snatching the glass away from him. “Have you missed me that much? I’d have thought Ned would be keeping you entertained,” she teased, and the barman glanced idly up from the pages of his newspaper, not missing a beat.
“You missed seeing me tap-dance, earlier,” he said dryly.
“Give over,” Vivien told him, slapping him on the arm as she passed. “You’d have a coronary if you tried, and we both know it.” She pulled another pint for Geoff and came back around to join us at our window table.
“You’re in a good mood, today,” I commented, and she grinned broadly, her eyes secretive.
“I have reason to be,” was all she would say, and no matter how hard we pressed her, we could not make her tell us where she’d been.
“She’s probably out meeting some married man,” Geoff joked, as we made our way back up the road towards my house an hour or so later.
I looked at him, horrified, thinking more of Iain Sumner than of the moral implications. “Oh, I hope not.”
“I’m joking,” Geoff explained, hugging my shoulders with a laugh. “She’ll tell us her secret, when she’s ready to. What are your plans for the rest of the afternoon? You working?”
I nodded. “I have to get the next batch of illustrations ready to send to my editor, or else she’ll have my head. What about you?”
“I think I’ll take a walk over and see what Iain’s up to,” he said, looking off towards the river. “I’ll ring you later, OK?” He bent and kissed me swiftly and we parted, Geoff taking the smaller turning that led off to the right while I continued up the main road to my house.
The wind had been dropping steadily all afternoon, and by the time I reached my drive the air was almost still, and the heavy clouds hung overhead, unmoving, blotting out the sun. Despite the warmth, I shivered as I went round to the back door and fitted the key in the lock.
The kitchen was dark and deserted and cool, and I left the door partly open to let in the warmer outside air. Somewhere, a baby was crying, and the sound filtered into the room, faint but persistent. Dumping my keys on the table, I raised my hand to my forehead as another shiver struck me, bringing beads of perspiration to my skin.
The child’s cry became a scream, behind me, and I lowered my hand to find Rachel watching me with concern.
“Does your head ache?” she asked.
It had a right to, I reasoned. Johnnie had been fussing steadily for the past hour, despite all Caroline’s attempts to quiet him. But the truth was that my head did not ache—I had only been trying to clear my thoughts. I was about to tell Rachel so, when the kitchen door opened and my uncle came into the room, his expression black as a thunderstorm.
He had been out of humor these past few days, and we had all borne the brunt of it. Now, he turned the force of his displeasure upon his wife. “Are you not accomplished enough, woman, to keep your own child from crying?”
Without thinking, I came to Caroline’s defense. “He is breaking a tooth,” I informed my uncle evenly. “He cannot help the crying.”
I might have been invisible. Jabez Howard leaned closer to his wife, his expression calm. “Shut the babe’s mouth,” he advised her pleasantly, “or I swear I’ll shut it for you.”
Terrified, Caroline smothered the child against her breast, rocking back and forth in an agitated motion. As if he could sense the danger, John stopped crying. Satisfied, my uncle straightened and turned to look at me, his eyes frightening with the depth of their cruelty.
“Mariana,” he said, “I would have squab for dinner. Go you to the dovecote and fetch me a bird.”
I looked at Rachel, and she rose cheerfully from her work, brushing her hands against her skirt. “I’ll go,” she offered, but my uncle stopped her with an upraised hand.
“I did not speak to you,” he told her, in a voice as smooth as honey. “I spoke to Mariana. I would have her fetch me a bird, and I will wait here for her to deliver it dead into my hands. ’Tis time she learned how to take a life.”
My hands trembled and I placed them behind my back so he would not see my weakness. There was no help to be had from any quarter. Rachel’s eyes held sympathy but she could not act, and Caroline was all but sobbing over her child in the corner by the hearth. Under my uncle’s insistent gaze, I turned and went out into the sunlit yard, my heart a heavy weight within my chest.
Chapter 25
The dovecote stood to the back of the garden, a stout, square building of rough stone with a roof of wooden shingles, crowned with an open cupola. The pigeons entered and left through that cupola, always returning with unerring exactness to the dovecote, to raise generation upon generation of young in the dim and crowded nesting boxes. It was a highly efficient structure—a comfortable, cunning, and deadly trap.
One sharp tug on a rope that hung from the ceiling, and a trapdoor fell to block the opening to the cupola. Unable to escape to the shelter of the skies, the birds could only flutter in panic while their nests were ravaged and their number culled. Why they chose to stay on in the dovecote afterwards I would never know. Why didn’t they fly away, when the trap was opened again? Why did they linger on and wait for death, like rabbits raised in a warren beside the kitchen door? Did they lack the sense to foresee their fate, I wondered, or was it simply that the horr
or of living had deadened their brains; that having grown accustomed to the security of their prison, they no longer knew where else to go?
I could become like that, I thought suddenly. If I did not guard against it, I too could become like the doomed birds in the dovecote. Like lovely, dead-eyed Caroline, with her hair turning white from worry at twenty-five. For if the dovecote was a trap, then so was Greywethers, and my uncle’s hand held the rope that could pull shut the door and bar my flight.
I could feel his eyes upon me now, watching me from the house, and I squared my shoulders defiantly before pushing open the low wooden door and taking a determined step inside the little building. At first, I could hear nothing, only the sharp creak of the door behind me as I leaned upon it to close it. Then subtly, pervasively, the sound began to permeate my senses—the gentle cooing of a hundred softly vibrating throats, a hundred pigeons nestled plump and warm within their niches.
The place had the look of a tomb, dim and neglected. The shadows lay thick in the corners, and from where I stood I could make out only the suggestion of walls. What little light there was fell in a circular, spreading shaft from the open cupola overhead, caught the dust in the air, and set it idly dancing against the darkness.
I searched low on the wall for an occupied nesting hole, and found a likely squab perched upon a ledge. The bird came easily into my hands, without fear, and lay there looking up at me with a round and vaguely interested eye. I could feel the insubstantial weight of the creature, the small heart racing against its fragile breast.
“Jesus, help me,” I pleaded in a whisper, closing my eyes. “I cannot.”
The deep voice that spoke in reply from the darkness behind me was so unexpected it sent me spinning round in sudden fear, clutching the startled pigeon to my bodice.
“There is a penalty to be paid for the theft of one of my birds,” the voice said.
Before the words had died away I recognized the speaker, and my own heartbeat slowly resumed its normal pace. Richard de Mornay took a step forward, nearer the light, but his smiling face remained half in shadow.
“How came you here?” I asked him rudely, my voice little more than a whisper.
“By the back door,” he replied, pointing out the little-used entrance on the west wall. “Your uncle did not see me, if that is what worries you.”
“And how can you be sure of that?”
“Because I saw him. He was well occupied within the stables at the time, I can assure you. I was a soldier, Mariana,” he chided me gently. “I know the art of ambush.”
“And is this then an ambush?”
“In truth, ’twas merely hunger brought me here.” He stretched one hand forward into the light to show me the two dead birds he held, but I was not entirely convinced.
“You have servants, surely,” I said, “who could fetch the pigeons for you.”
“Ay.” A faint gleam from the darkness. “But then I should have missed the pleasure of your company.”
I looked quickly away from the drooping dead pigeons, cradling my live one more closely. “You flatter me, my lord.”
“Ay. ’Tis time someone did.” For a moment he was silent, and I felt his scrutiny. “Are you enjoying your latest book?” he asked me finally.
“Very much.” I nodded. “I shall need another, soon, I have almost finished with it.”
He smiled. “You will have to wait, I’m afraid. I must go away for a short time.”
“For how long?” I looked up sharply, surprised at how much the thought of his leaving disturbed me.
“A week, perhaps. No longer. I go to Portsmouth to ride with the king back to Salisbury.”
My eyes rounded childishly. “The king would remove to Salisbury?”
“He fears to remain in London. The weekly bill there lists more than one thousand who died from the plague this past week alone. The king’s counselors have persuaded him that it would be more prudent to seek the country air.”
“But why must you ride with him?”
He shrugged. “It is my duty, and the duty of my family, to protect the king. These are still unsettled times, Mariana. The Roundhead legacy yet taints the countryside, and there are many who would see this Charles lose his head like his father before him.”
“And you hold it your responsibility to stop them?”
“My sword is as sharp as any man’s.”
“Ay, and your flesh as thin.” There was bitterness in my voice, and he came forward, stooping down to look into my face.
“You fear for me?” He touched my cheek with a gentle finger. “There is no need.”
I was embarrassed at my transparency. “I fear nothing, my lord,” I told him, “but my boredom in your absence.”
“A diplomat’s reply,” he praised me. “Well, then, I leave you the run of my library, while I am away. So that you will not be bored.” Reaching into the pocket of his coat, he produced a key, which he held out to show me. “This will open the door to the courtyard, on the west side of the house. From there you may access the library when you wish.”
“I cannot take your key,” I protested.
“Why not?”
I searched for an excuse. “I have no place to keep it,” I said, “where it would not be discovered.”
“Then keep it here,” he said, solving the problem easily. Leaning forward so that his arm brushed mine, he reached past me and slid the key into one of the empty nesting holes. “It is in the box with the cracked ledge, you see? You shall have no trouble finding it again, when you need it.” He straightened, but did not draw away. The air grew thick between us. “Which leaves but the matter of your forfeit,” he said, in a low and languid voice.
“My forfeit?”
“For stealing one of my pigeons,” he reminded me.
“I do not steal this bird, my lord,” I said evenly, “and ’twas my understanding that the dovecote belonged to my uncle.”
“Your uncle makes use of it, to be sure, but it was built by my ancestors, and it lies on my land. My ownership is indisputable.”
I tried to voice a protest, but he merely pressed closer, shaking his head. “’Tis no use denying the crime,” he told me, “with the evidence there in your hands. ’Tis plainly theft, and I have the right to exact a penalty.”
He held me still beneath his kiss with his free hand, his fingers sliding beneath the weight of my hair, supporting the curve of my jawline and the backward arch of my neck. When he lifted his head, my heart was racing in tempo with that of the bird that I still held to my breast. I had half a mind to select a dozen more pigeons, if he could promise the same penalty for each of them, but I dared not tell him so.
He read my thoughts, anyway. “Would you wish another bird?” he asked me, grinning.
“I cannot kill the one I have,” I said, shaking my head. “My uncle sent me here as punishment. He knew I could not do it.”
The grin vanished. “And what have you done to deserve punishment?”
“I defended his wife,” I replied bluntly. “He did not care for my interference.”
“A grievous offense, indeed,” Richard said, in a satirical tone. He looked at me, his expression serious. “Your soft heart does you credit, Mariana. There is no shame in hesitating to kill something. We’ll let this fellow live, then, shall we?” Gently, he detached the placid bird from my grasp and replaced it in its nesting hole. “Here, you may take these, in its place.” He handed me the birds that he had killed earlier.
I looked down at the stiff and lifeless bodies, reluctant even to hold them. “But what of your dinner?” I asked him.
Richard de Mornay smiled mirthlessly. “My heart is harder than yours. I have no difficulty taking life.” He closed my fingers round the dead pigeons. “Take these to your uncle,” he said. “I have more than I need.”
I would have left him, then, but rather than step aside to let me pass, he caught my face again with both hands and kissed me a second time. It was a long, breathless minute before I was released, my ragged breathing nearly drowning the cacophony of contentedly cooing birds.
“After all,” he excused himself, his own voice not quite steady, “you are availing yourself of two more of my best birds.”
The warbling birds grew louder still, the circle of light at our feet growing suddenly, blindingly, bright, and then there was only silence, and sunlight, and I found myself standing alone beside the low, crumbling wall, with bruised and broken flowers waving at my feet.
***
By walking directly across the fields and making a wide arc around the stables, I could approach the west side of Crofton Hall without being observed, finding myself at last in a rutted, little-used lane, deep with shade, that closely hugged the towering stone walls. It was a simple matter to locate the section of wall that hid the courtyard. Shorter than its neighboring sections, it had no roof, and the ivy had grown clean over the top of the wall—a solid curtain of massed green leaves and twisted stems, impenetrable, that hung heavily to the ground beneath.
In spite of the ivy, I found the door on my first try. It was a low door, set flush with the wall, old oak weathered to the same dun color as the stones that surrounded it. The grasping ivy came clear with a tearing sound as I worked my hands around the edges of the door, searching for the handle and lock.
Having located it, I felt in my pocket for the little key and held my breath in anticipation. The key fitted smoothly into the lock… but it would not turn. Decades, perhaps centuries, of neglect and dampness had rusted the lock into immobility.
I let the ivy fall again, obscuring the door, and releasing my disappointment in a small sigh, I turned back, retracing my steps across the empty fields. I had not really expected the key to still work, I reminded myself. And I wasn’t even sure what opening the door would have accomplished, at any rate. At least now I knew what the key was for, and why it had been left in the dovecote for me to find.
Mariana Page 24
